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What to watch: Senate, House races

Coming out of the final weekend of the campaign, the GOP is still widely expected to fall short Tuesday night. The three- or four-seat gain it needs to make Harry Reid minority leader no longer looks to be in the cards.

Despite signs of a tightening race, Republicans are confident they’ll pick up the open Nebraska seat. But a pair of weekend polls show the party losing the Massachusetts seat held by Republican Sen. Scott Brown in the nationally watched contest.

That means the composition of the next Senate — Democrats currently hold a 53-47 advantage — will be determined in a crop of upper Midwestern states hosting fiercely competitive campaigns in Wisconsin, Montana and North Dakota.

Party officials and analysts on both sides are also bracing for razor-thin outcomes in Nevada and possibly Indiana.

“Only one race (besides local legislative) has me really hung up in my predictions: #nvsen. It is going to be really close, tweeps. #recount,” Nevada’s go-to political commentator, Jon Ralston, tweeted Sunday.

A batch of final polling only muddied the picture in several key races.

In Montana, Mason-Dixon had Rep. Denny Rehberg up 4 points over Democratic Sen. Jon Tester, but Rasmussen Reports and Public Policy Polling surveys gave Tester a narrow edge.

“I don’t know on Montana. Could make the case either way,” conceded a top Republican strategist monitoring the race.

Democrats razzed Rehberg for halting campaigning during the final weekend, sending a staffer in a chicken suit to stand outside the congressman’s office wielding a sign that read, “Too Chicken to Campaign?”

Libertarian Dan Cox could prove pivotal in the race. If Cox nets more than 5 percent of the vote, it could allow Tester to sneak through with just 47 percent.

The Wisconsin race between former Gov. Tommy Thompson and Democratic Rep. Tammy Baldwin is also too close to call.

Closing public polling has given Baldwin a 3-point edge that falls within the margin of error. But the intense competition for the state’s 10 electoral votes means the winner could be determined by presidential head winds.

“You’re running against history,” said one Democratic consultant, referring to Thompson’s long political run in the Badger State.

Republicans are feeling better about Rep. Rick Berg’s prospects of picking up the open seat in North Dakota. While Democrat Heidi Heitkamp has run a smart and spirited campaign, Berg is benefiting from hardening partisan attitudes in a presidential year. Mitt Romney cut an ad for Berg that began airing this weekend while Heitkamp was forced to place Sen. Kent Conrad in a commercial defending the candidate against a charge that she would close the state’s military bases.

The Indiana Senate seat was supposed to be safely in the GOP column at this point — but now looms as a potential disaster for the party.

Richard Mourdock’s baffling comment about rape and abortion during a debate with Democratic Rep. Joe Donnelly erased the Republican’s small lead.

Romney’s strong performance in the state could drag Mourdock across the finish line, but public polling gives Donnelly the edge.

Conservative groups aiding Mourdock are unmoved.

“We are going to win by 5. Wait and see,” predicted Greg Fettig, a top Hoosier State tea party leader who spearheaded the fight to bring down Sen. Dick Lugar.

Neither side is chest-beating in Nevada, where Sen. Dean Heller appears to hold the slimmest of leads over Rep. Shelley Berkley.

Readers' Comments (31)

So in other words Politico decided to use it's left wing bias to come up with the title. A bunch of too close to call races translates to destined? I agree the GOP has not helped it's case in several races but I also would say the Dems are breathing a sigh of relief either.

Barack Obama's 2,000+ Fast & Furious are being used to murder hundreds and hundreds of innocent people in Mexico and America.

Fast and Furious Scandal: New Details Emerge on How the U.S. Government Armed Mexican Drug Cartels

(( On January 30, 2010, a commando of at least 20 hit men parked themselves outside a birthday party of high school and college students in Villas de Salvarcar, Ciudad Juarez. Near midnight, the assassins, later identified as hired guns for the Mexican cartel La Linea, broke into a one-story house and opened fire on a gathering of nearly 60 teenagers. Outside, lookouts gunned down a screaming neighbor and several students who had managed to escape. Fourteen young men and women were killed, and 12 more were wounded before the hit men finally fled.

Indirectly, the United States government played a role in the massacre by supplying some of the firearms used by the cartel murderers. Three of the high caliber weapons fired that night in Villas de Salvarcar were linked to a gun tracing operation run by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), according to a Mexican army document obtained exclusively by Univision News.

Univision News identified a total of 57 more previously unreported firearms that were bought by straw purchasers monitored by ATF during Operation Fast and Furious, and then recovered in Mexico in sites related to murders, kidnappings, and at least one other massacre.))

http://abcnews.go.com/A...

HERE ARE 5 THINGS YOU DIDN’T KNOW ABOUT OPERATION FAST AND FURIOUS

1. 57 Previously Unreported Guns From Fast and Furious Discovered

One of the most explosive revelations made in the Univision News special involves 57 previously unreported firearms from Fast and Furious that were reportedly used in a number of murders and kidnappings.

After cross-referencing the serial numbers of guns used in Fast and Furious against guns confiscated in Mexico, Univision found that about 100 guns were used in crimes and 57 of the guns were not included in an official congressional investigation.

2. Fast and Furious Guns Used in Two Grisly Massacres

On January 30, 2010, a commando of at least 20 hit men parked themselves outside a birthday party of high school and college students in Villas de Salvarcar, Ciudad Juarez. Near midnight, the assassins, later identified as hired guns for the Mexican cartel La Linea, broke into a one-story house and opened fire on a gathering of nearly 60 teenagers. Outside, lookouts gunned down a screaming neighbor and several students who had managed to escape. Fourteen young men and women were killed, and 12 more were wounded before the hit men finally fled.

The other bloody attack linked to Fast and Furious guns occurred in September 2009 when members of a Mexican drug cartel murdered 18 young men at Salvarcar and El Aliviane, a rehab center in Ciudad Juarez, according to the report.

3. U.S. Gun-Walking Operations Conducted in Additional States, Expanded to Other Countries

The Univision News report also revealed that other ATF offices outside of Arizona initiated similar gunrunning programs.

An ATF field division in Florida reportedly launched “Operation Castaway,” which put weapons in the hands of criminals in Colombia, Honduras and Venezuela, according to Hugh Crumpler, the lead informant in the case, who talked to Univision News from a prison cell.

4. ‘Confirmed’: Jaime Zapata Was Killed With Weapons From U.S. Gun-Walking Operation

Slain ICE Special Agent Jaime Zapata. In Texas, even more weapons were allowed to cross into Mexico under ATF supervision, according to court documents and testimony of Magdalena Avila Villalobos, the sister of an Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent who exchanged gunfire with cartel hit men alongside Jaime Zapata on a rural highway in Mexico in February 2011. Zapata was killed during the confrontation.

Villalobos told Univision News the guns that killed Zapata, and almost killed her brother, were “not from Arizona and Fast and Furious” but from a “very similar operation.”

“Those weapons that have been recovered, it’s been confirmed that they were weapons used in the shootout that killed Jaime Zapata and wounded Victor Avila,” she said.

5. Mexico’s Cartel Violence Spiked in 2009 During Fast and Furious

Operation Fast and Furious was supposedly a program run solely by ATF that allowed nearly 2,000 guns to “walk” out of the United States and into the hands of high-ranking cartel members so they could be tracked and federal agencies could dismantle the drug trafficking organizations. But that’s not how it worked out. The agency ultimately lost track of the firearms, leaving Mexico’s powerful drug cartels even better equipped to kill.

Mexico experienced a spike in cartel violence in 2009 while Fast and Furious was in full swing, as the gangs fought for control of various territories, Univision News reports.

Fast and Furious became public after U.S. Border Patrol agent Brian Terry was killed in a gunfight with Mexican thugs in December of 2010. Congressional investigators, with Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) leading the way, pushed for investigations and hearings, only to be stonewalled by Attorney General Eric Holder, the Justice Department and the White House, who claim Republicans’ interest in Fast and Furious is only political theater.

President Barack Obama moved to shield Holder and the Justice Department by invoking executive privilege over Fast and Furious documents that the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee has been after for years.

Meanwhile, officials in Mexico are looking for answers because for them, Fast and Furious isn’t some metaphorical chess piece that they are manipulating for political gain. The fact of the matter is, they have lost hundreds of Mexican citizens as a result of the U.S.-run Fast and Furious — and they want the truth.

“Americans are not often moved by the pain of those outside [their country]…But they are moved by the pain of their own. Well, turn around and watch the massacres,” Javier Sicilia, a Mexican poet who lost his son due to cartel violence, told Univision News.

(( ‘We’re going to have that person arrested and prosecuted that did the video,” said Hillary Clinton. No, not the person who made the video saying that voting for Barack Obama is like losing your virginity to a really cool guy. I’ll get to that in a moment. But Secretary Clinton was talking about the fellow who made the supposedly Islamophobic video that supposedly set off the sacking of the Benghazi consulate. And, indeed, she did “have that person arrested.” By happy coincidence, his bail hearing has been set for three days after the election, by which time he will have served his purpose. These two videos — the Islamophobic one and the Obamosexual one — bookend the remarkable but wholly deserved collapse of the president’s reelection campaign.

You’ll recall that a near-month-long attempt to blame an obscure YouTube video for the murder of four Americans and the destruction of U.S. sovereign territory climaxed in the vice-presidential debate with Joe Biden’s bald assertion that the administration had been going on the best intelligence it had at the time. By then, it had been confirmed that there never had been any protest against the video, and that the Obama line that Benghazi had been a spontaneous movie review that just got a little out of hand was utterly false. The only remaining question was whether the administration had knowingly lied or was merely innocently stupid. The innocent-stupidity line became harder to maintain this week after Fox News obtained State Department e-mails revealing that shortly after 4 p.m. Eastern, less than a half hour after the assault in Benghazi began, the White House situation room knew the exact nature of it.

We also learned that, in those first moments of the attack, a request for military back-up was made by U.S. staff on the ground but was denied by Washington. It had planes and special forces less than 500 miles away in southern Italy — or about the same distance as Washington to Boston. They could have been there in less than two hours. Yet the commander-in-chief declined to give the order. So Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods fought all night against overwhelming odds, and died on a rooftop in a benighted jihadist hellhole while Obama retired early to rest up before his big Vegas campaign stop. “Within minutes of the first bullet being fired the White House knew these heroes would be slaughtered if immediate air support was denied,” said Ty Woods’s father, Charles. “In less than an hour, the perimeters could have been secured and American lives could have been saved. After seven hours fighting numerically superior forces, my son’s life was sacrificed because of the White House’s decision.”

Why would Obama and Biden do such a thing? Because to launch a military operation against an al-Qaeda affiliate on the anniversary of 9/11 would have exposed the hollowness of their boast through convention week and the days thereafter — that Osama was dead and al-Qaeda was finished. And so Ty Woods, Glen Doherty, Sean Smith, and Chris Stevens were left to die, and a decision taken to blame an entirely irrelevant video and, as Secretary Clinton threatened, “have that person arrested.” And, in the weeks that followed, the government of the United States lied to its own citizens as thoroughly and energetically as any totalitarian state, complete with the midnight knock on the door from not-so-secret policemen sent to haul the designated fall-guy into custody. This goes far beyond the instinctive secretiveness to which even democratic governments are prone. The Obama administration created a wholly fictional story line, and devoted its full resources to maintaining it. ... ))

Maintained private law practice at Cambridge office for over a decade but not licensed in Massachusetts

(( The debate last Thursday night between Scott Brown and Elizabeth Warren covered ground mostly known to voters.

But there was one subject most people watching probably did not know about, Elizabeth Warren’s private legal representation of The Travelers Insurance Company in an asbestos-related case.

Brown brought the point up late in the debate, and hammered it:

Warren attempted to deny her role, and referred to a Boston Globe article, but the Globe article supports Brown’s account. The Globe article indicated the representation was for a period of three years and Warren was paid $212,000. The case resulted in a Supreme Court victory for Travelers arising out of a bankruptcy case in New York.

Whatever the political implications of the exchange, Warren’s representation of Travelers raises another big potential problem for Warren.

Warren represented not just Travelers, but numerous other companies starting in the late 1990s working out of and using her Harvard Law School office in Cambridge, which she listed as her office of record on briefs filed with various courts. Warren, however, never has been licensed to practice law in Massachusetts.

As detailed below, there are at least two provisions of Massachusetts law Warren may have violated. First, on a regular and continuing basis she used her Cambridge office for the practice of law without being licensed in Massachusetts. Second, in addition to operating an office for the practice of law without being licensed in Massachusetts, Warren actually practiced law in Massachusetts without being licensed.

Warren refused to disclose the full extent of her private law practice when asked by The Boston Globe. If Warren denies that she has practiced law in Massachusetts without a license, Warren should disclose the full extent of her private law practice. The public has a right to assess whether Warren has failed to comply with the most basic requirement imposed on others, the need to become a member of the Bar of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in order to practice law in and from Massachusetts. ))

"The main obstacle to a stable and just world order is the United States." — George Soros

"This would be the time’ because I think you really need to bring China into the creation of a New world order, financial world order. I think you need a new world order, that China has to be part of the process of creating it and they have to buy in, they have to own it in the same way as the United States owns the current order." — George Soros

"We really need to bring China into the creation of a New world order, financial world order. They are kind of reluctant members of the IMF. They play along. But they don’t make much of a contribution because it is not their institution. I think you need a New world order: China has to be a part of the process of creating it and they have to buy in. They have to own it." — George Soros

"China will be the engine driving it forward. The U.S. will be a drag with the decline of the dollar." — George Soros

"Well, certainly a decline in the value of the dollar is necessary in order to compensate for the fact that the US economy will remain rather weak, will be a drag on the global economy. China will emerge as the motor replacing the US consumer and, of course, it’s a smaller motor because the Chinese economy is much smaller. So the world economy will have less of a motor, so it will move forward slower than it has in the last 25 years. But China will be the engine driving it forward and the US will be actually a drag that’s being pulled along through a gradual decline in the value of the dollar. So there would be a slow decline in the value of the dollar. A Managed decline. That would be the adjustment that it needs to be accomplished. Now it could actually get out of hand and certainly the fear of inflation will precede inflation itself." — George Soros

"Destroying America will be the culmination of my life’s work." — George Soros

This happened in 2010.. During the GOP sweep..Teh fringe Tea party candidates beat out Republicans that were a lock to win in the General..(see CO..NV..MD..AK) This year it is the same..especially in MO and IN..

Of course it won't matter because GOP can stop a bill from coming to the Senate floor even when the vote to bring it to the floor is 58-42...However,; with Obama re-elected their purpose of the last 4 years is down the tubes for the GOP...we will see how that plays out...

Catanese is sugar-coating this for Republicans. They were much better than even money to capture the senate and expected to win it before Olympia Snowe announced her retirement. Instead they'll at best maintain the status quo, and possibly even lose ground. This is nothing short of a debacle. Certainly John Cornyn will lose his job as head of the NRSC but further than that Republicans will have to find a way to stop nominating crazy tea party candidates who have done nothing but cost them the senate, now two election cycles in a row. That's a big problem.

Even the conservative Real Clear Politics has the Democrats picking up one seat and holding the Senate majority 54-37%. The GOP could easily have captured the Senate. In 2010, a GOP tidal wave election, unacceptable Tea Party senate candidates beat more moderate GOP candidates in the primaries in Neveda, Colorado and Delaware. Democrats beat GOP/Tea Party candidites in all three states. This year two strong GOP senate seats appear to have been lost in Indiana and Missouri with unfortunate comments by GOP candidates Todd (legitimate rape) Akin and Dick (God intended the rape) Mourdock has snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.